DEMOGRAPHICS: Based on 2012 census. School Leavers is percentage of high school graduates divided by persons over 18. LOTE is number identified as speaking language other than English at home, divided by total population.

Denis Napthines electorate of South-West Coast is centred on the coastal towns of Warrnambool and Portland near the South Australian border, and also encompasses 5800 square kilometres of surrounding rural territory. It has not been changed by the redistribution. The electorate was created at the 2002 election with the abolition of the separate electorates of Warrnambool and Portland. Denis Napthine had been the member for Portland since 1988, while Warrnambool was held by John Vogels, who gained the seat for the Liberals when Nationals member John McGrath retired in 1999. The new electorate was bequeathed to Napthine, who was the partys leader at the time preselection was being arranged, while Vogels was accommodated in the upper house in Western province, and then in the Western Victoria region following upper house reform in 2006.

Napthine did not achieve great seniority during the Kennett years, serving as Youth and Community Services Minister in the governments second term, until he served a brief two-week stint as Treasurer while the government was in limbo after the 1999 election. He subsequently emerged as Opposition Leader following Jeff Kennetts resignation, but was deposed by Robert Doyle three months before the November 2002 election. Napthine went into that election defending a notional Liberal margin of just 4.7% in the new seat, and he did well under the circumstances of that election to hold on against a relatively mild swing of 4.3% swing. He added a further 3.3% buffer to his margin in 2006, and then 7.9% in 2010.

Throughout the remainder of the opposition years, Napthine served mostly in regionally oriented shadow portfolios including rural and regional development, regional cities and agriculture. In government he assumed the position of Regional Cities and Racing Minister, which he has since maintained, and Ports and Major Projects Minister, which he has not. Napthines rise to the premiership was achieved with the support of the outgoing Ted Baillieu, who was thought to have counted a desire to forestall alternative claimants to the leadership among his motivations for resigning.

Labors candidate for the electorate is the persistent Roy Reekie, who ran in Warrnambool in 1999 and in South-West Coast in 2002 and 2006.